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Hi Laura, if I remember the posts on the main PF page and the advice from my OB right, I think ACOG already recommends all pregnant women get the flu shot. I remember grilling my MFM during my last pregnancy about what I should do if I couldn't find a flu shot without thimerosal (this was in 2005, before swine flu), and he told me that he felt the risks of possible mercury were outweighed by the risks posed getting the flu while pregnant (I did find preservative-free shots for both pregnancies). My guess is that you should ask your doctor(s) to see what they say in your particular case.

Hmm interesting. Right when I saw the articles I wondered if CMV would increase risk - especially since so many people have CMV and never have any knowledge of it or issues from it (the first study HEather linked says yes it does). I also wonder how EBV infection would play out. I have chronic EBV. I would estimate at LEAST 50% of the organ donors we see have either EBV or CMV come back as positive (these are minor infections and do NOT rule organs out for transplantation.

Laura, I always recommend getting the flu shot :) However, and someone correct me if I am processing this wrong, it seems to me the risk is more from a chronic underlying infection and not an acute illness such as the flu.

I don't know how I missed this when you posted, Brett, but thank you for dropping by to clarify!

So this ties into the question about whether the soluble FLT produced by the placenta in response to the placental hypoxia is a chicken, or an egg, then, right? It certainly makes a bunch of necrotic cells... but so does initial implantation.

Three weeks before I was diagnosed I had suspected swine flu. I never felt 'right' after. I long suspected that the flu had triggered off my hellp/pe but my doc said otherwise and thought that my pe only started a few days before I was diagnosed. I, however am convinced the flu set off my syptoms.

As the senior author of the paper ya'll you are discussing first off I am honored that Caryn and others have commented on our work and findings-this certainly makes a basic scientist feel good that our work may have some real life implications. Secondly, hopefully to clarify, we were able to induce PE-like symptoms in rats by excessively activating the mom's immune system during pregnancy. As Caryn mentioned in somewhat other terms, the mom's immune system is already activated trying to prepare for and accept a half-foreign fetus. This represents a pro-inflammatory state in preparation for these events. What we showed that is that the events associated with pregnancy do not cause PE alone, nor does immune system activation in non-pregnant animals, but the combination of the 2 caused PE like symptoms in animals. Toll-like receptor 3 senses double-stranded RNA (which are rotavirus and rheovirus), but several other factors can activate these receptors during pregnancy. While I would love to prove that every case of PE is caused by previous exposure to rheo/rotavirus, necrotic (dying) cells can also activate TLR3 and other viruses (single stranded RNA viruses such as CMV, HPV, etc. when they divide create double-stranded RNA) can also activate TLR3. We are presently determining whether a mom has to have an active viral infection vs. a latent one as well as whether TLR3 is activated in women with PE vs. normotensive pregnant women. My ultimate goal, if we find that TLR3 is activated in PE women, is to design TLR3 inhibitors as a therapy to prevent PE after it is diagnosed. In support, we have developed a mouse model of the disease, somewhat similar to the rat model in the paper, but we are able to gather a substantial amount more data regarding the possible mechanisms and are now able to test various therapeutics. While it is no consolation to those of you who have experienced PE, hopefully we can treat this in women in the near future.

That's interesting. I've had PIH/PE twice now but in my second pregnancy I developed it much earlier - 32 weeks vs 40 weeks. I also had a viral infection at 20 weeks with my second pregnancy that was dx'd and treated by my OB. I wonder if the strain on my immune system caused PE to show up earlier. Of course there was at least 10 weeks in between my viral infection and the start of PE so who knows.